


Fit for a Queen

by Salchat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Cooking, Gen, Hive Mind, Humor, POV Wraith, Sibling Rivalry, Telepathy, Wraith, Wraith society, Wraithlings, learning to cook
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25883122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salchat/pseuds/Salchat
Summary: A young Wraith defies his Queen and is shunned by his hive.  Will he find a place within Wraith society or will he have to leave forever?  This story takes place after an uneasy truce has been established between humans and Wraith, with the Wraith having undergone gene therapy so that they can survive on human food.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 11





	Fit for a Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eos_x](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eos_x/gifts).



> This story is a gift for Eos1969. I have crafted it with care and joy and I hope you love reading it as much as I loved writing it.
> 
> I have used * to indicate Wraith telepathy.

He sensed her approach as a pricking at the edge of thought. The small irritation in his mind grew toward familiar dissonance as the young queen’s arrogance forged ahead of her physical presence. Not yet old enough for her own hive, she was nevertheless constantly attended by a little coterie of Wraithlings, held willingly within her grasp, their blind adoration surrounding her complacent self-regard, like a thick, cloying layer of rotting detritus. She would drop them like hot coals as soon as she could, he knew. As soon as she felt her mental powers straining at the bounds of her mother’s command, she would take what mature blades she was able to wrest from her parent hive’s control and form her own court, leaving her immature followers bereft of her arrogant, petulant mind.

She entered, her train of disciples in her wake, her chin lifted haughtily, her lips curled back in a disdainful sneer.

*Zephyr!* She slipped her cold tendril into his thoughts, marking his name with scorn.

*Frostvine,* he named her in return, carefully devoid of any mental inflection.

She hesitated, then, and he felt her mind coil within itself, preparing to strike out at his, as she had done so many times since she had followed him from their mother's womb, to be greeted with joy and pride where, at best, he only ever received tolerance and a vague sense of disappointment. She did not strike. Instead, her gaze travelled over the contents of the chamber, her distaste at the accoutrements of humanity showing in the contemptuous tilt of her head and the delicate twitching of her long, narrow-tipped fingers. Spikes of command projected from her consciousness and her small subjects scattered to do her bidding.

Zephyr resumed his activities. He stirred the contents of the pan before him, careful to move the spoon around the perimeter so that the sauce would not stick and burn. If he stopped, even for a moment, he had learned that it would thicken where it was closest to the heat and then, even if he resumed stirring, it would be lumpy and unpalatable. As he moved the spoon in slow circles and figure-eights, Zephyr allowed his mind to float vaguely past his determination to prepare this human meal and he maintained an impassive gaze as Frostvine issued her peremptory commands and chastised with quick lashes of thought. 

They had only come for the iced products. The shiny steel equipment and stores of packaged food that the Atlanteans had given them would have gone unused were it not for Zephyr. Drones had been detailed to prepare the nutritional paste daily, the bland mix that most of the hive now subsisted on, and neither Frostvine’s clique nor the mature Wraith of this hive would demean themselves with the act of learning to prepare and cook meals. But Frostvine had conceived a liking for the frozen animal milk and so Zephyr’s culinary adventures were regularly disturbed.

She held a colourful receptacle in one hand and excavated its contents with a small spoon, her pointed tongue delicately licking as her jade green eyes rested upon Zephyr. He dropped his shoulders, his mind swirling indeterminately with the rise of steam from the cooking pot. Her cold amusement tickled the surface of his thoughts and then she was there, in full force, her will vibrating in his skull, the sudden intensity hazing his vision. He bent and slipped past her attack, in his own inimitable way, with the elusive, floating drift of thought that had given him his name. He felt her anger and dared not smile. She came again, even though her body remained loose and languid, her attention apparently absorbed by the creamy, cold foodstuff. His vision juddered as she tried to force him to kneel, to bow to her superior strength, but he simply conceded, diverting his thoughts to a private place, where, indeed he was forced to kneel, but divorcing the action from the muscles that would have allowed the abasement in reality. She withdrew and could not prevent the angry hiss that issued from snarling lips.

He knew what Frostvine's next move would be; it was always the same and he thought that unless she recruited an adviser skilled in both the strategy of battle and diplomacy, she would not live long as a queen in her own right. Withering contempt heralded her words, twisting into his mind like a serpent.

*I wonder that you can so demean yourself, Zephyr.* He concentrated on his stirring. *But then you were ever one to lower yourself to the base level of the filthy kine!*

She strolled toward him, swaying her hips in an exaggerated manner as she moved between the workbenches and scattered wooden stools. She shook her long, vermilion hair and it rippled and shone like waves on a sunset shore.

*You are lower even than they, because you abuse the body gifted to you by our Queen mother. You sully the honour of our kind by using the hand which should be a conduit of power to perform tasks fit only for cattle!" She leant toward him and then recoiled, grimacing at the heat rising from the hob.

The wooden spoon moved round and round as the liquid cooked. Heat and agitation applied to the products of agriculture; crude indeed, but, Zephyr thought, calming and satisfying. He would not regret his actions, not though it brought disgrace.

*You will never be a blade!* She ground the words into his psyche, striking at the heart of his youthful insecurity. *You will have no hive, no place, no _queen!_ * 

He met her javelin gaze and knew by the satisfied toss of her head that his face betrayed his fear. She viewed him, her chin lifted disdainfully, as she might consider her choice from the culling bays. Then her nostrils thinned and flared; she sniffed sharply and her lips thinned into a contemptuous smirk. *You smell like _kine!_ * she said with delighted cruelty.

And then she was gone, and her followers, leaving a scatter of containers and dripping spoons, skittered hastily after her.

Zephyr shuddered, knowing that one day, in her full maturity, Frostvine would try to bend him once more to her will and, perhaps, succeed.

Small bubbles began to form on the surface of the liquid and he lessened the heat slightly and continued to stir. It had not been easy, turning his body and mind to this activity; his limbs, grown suddenly long in a race to maturity, were gangling and clumsy, and his mind struggled to assimilate the subtleties of taste and scent and the sequence of combining and heating ingredients that was half chemistry, half art. But Zephyr had been willing enough and sufficiently outcast already from his fellow Wraithlings that such a course of action hardly lowered him further in their estimation. 

He would not feed from a human. He knew, full well, that the secondhand life-force he had received from his father was bought at the cost of human lives. And that, when his father had grown too angry with his unnatural, disobedient, offspring and he begged and borrowed from any that would spare him from starvation, he was sinking himself beneath contempt in the eyes of the hive. But now, with the Lanteans’ treaty and the gene therapy that made it possible for Wraith to not only survive, but thrive on human food, Zephyr no longer had to rely on his hive for sustenance.

He thought, resentfully, of the faction that sought to form a new elite by running ahead of the current trend, advocating for human rights as if they had a shred of compassion for their former prey. They spouted hollow platitudes about respect for life in any form and how the manner in which one treated one's inferiors was a measure of a civilized society, and then they skulked in dark corners, whispering into each other’s minds their hunger and thirst for the hot, drenching flood of a human life. Zephyr had more respect for the old blades, who had not wanted the treaty with the Lanteans and had only complied because their Queen willed it. *What will we do? Who will we be?* they had said, their long battle against humanity defused and their hunger poorly sated by a slow release of calories rather than the euphoric gush of living energy. 

But before the agreement with the Atlanteans had even been a distant glimmer, Zephyr had spoken for the humans. He had been brave enough to rebel openly against his Queen, even going so far as to wear human clothes in Her presence, including the shirt onto which he had spent hours stitching the slogan ‘Human lives matter’. That had not gone down well, of course, and his scoured mind had taken many days to recover from the Queen’s savage attack. The most galling thing, however, was neither the pain, nor the calls from those who would have thrust him from the hive immediately, out into the vacuum between planets; no, it was those who had seen him as a tiresome child that had infuriated him the most; a juvenile, rebelling against authority for the sake of rebellion alone. *He’ll grow out of it,* they’d said. *It’s just a phase.* Of course, if the Queen had taken him seriously, he’d be dead by now; a dried up husk, displayed in the throne room as an example to others, but that wasn’t the point.

The sauce had taken on a creamy transparency. Zephyr lifted it off the hob. He should have already put a large pan of water on to boil and partly cooked the hard yellow tubes that would soften in the heat and the moisture, but Frostvine had distracted him. He filled the largest cooking pot from the water pipe and set it on the heat. Then he scraped the heap of fine orange shreds into the cooling sauce and stirred them in, watching as the liquid changed from creamy white to orangey yellow. Some of the shreds had fallen on the work-surface and he picked them up between his long fingernails and placed them, one at a time, on his tongue. The sharp taste, that he had learnt was sodium chloride, and the rich taste that he knew was animal fat, filled his mouth and he closed his eyes, purring deep in his throat.

*You smell like kine,* Frostvine had said; it was not the first time the accusation had been levelled at him. Before he had earned his name, long before that even, he had been set apart from his fellows. Set apart by circumstance and perhaps also inclination, but Zephyr wondered whether he too would have been Frostvine's whining pet if he had not conceived a sympathy for their human prey.

It had happened on an ordinary culling; ordinary for the majority of the hive, but a special day for the little Wraithlings, taken for their first sight of the animals that would sustain them. Zephyr had only hazy memories of that distant day. The young blades that had been tasked with guarding himself and his friends had been careless, and he had slipped away into the woods, with some vague idea of striking out on his own and returning, triumphant, with his prize of captives. 

He had met a child; a human child, as he later realised, but, at the time he saw only a small person like himself, with a mind curiously unresponsive but nevertheless filled with mischief and laughter, like sunlight on the dancing leaves of the surrounding forest. He hadn't even noticed whether the little person was a girl or a boy. At the time he would have assumed that everyone he met was male, queens being rare and never without their court, be they ever so young.

They had chased each other through the trees and laughed and played, wrestled and rolled, totally without guile or fear. And then he had been found and dragged away, crying for his new friend, and had not understood why the young blade gripped his arm so painfully tightly or why the mind that touched his was filled with anger and revulsion. The other little Wraithlings had regarded him with round, horrified eyes and then Frostvine had started the taunts, holding her nose and covering her facial slits and projecting sickening images of human filth into his mind. The others had joined in and, from that day on, he was viewed with disgust and scorn by the young Wraith and sneering contempt by the adults.

He never found out what happened to his little playmate, but he never forgot the simple joy and open acceptance of their meeting, nor that the quality of the child's mind was so very much like his own, or any other Wraithling.

The derisive taunts followed him as he grew toward maturity and increased ten-fold when he had been taken to the culling pens for the first time and had refused to feed. His father had been incandescent with fury and had threatened to abandon him on the nearest planet. Frostvine had gloried in her disgust. *Zephyr loves humans!* she had told her small court. *Zephyr wants to live and mate with them!* and, with delighted childish revulsion, *Zephyr passes excrement like the kine!*

His lips curled and he huffed a breathy laugh. They'd all had to get used to that; solid food in, solid waste out; it was a fact of life for Wraith now, as it was for their human allies.

The water was not yet boiling, and the slew of half-consumed tubs of frozen milk and dirty spoons were offending his sense of order. Zephyr threw away the tubs and washed up the spoons, not scorning work that should have been fitting only for a drone. He liked the human word for this room: kitchen. “My kitchen,” he said, aloud, knowing that it was not and hoping that one day, he would have such a space of his own. “It will be tidy,” he said, with the same absolute authority his father used for the words, *They will be culled.*

The Lanteans had installed the kitchen, fitting their awkward, shiny cuboids into the irregular, organic space. Then their Masters of Sustenance had come to teach and the Queen had ordered some of Her blades to attend. Zephyr had slipped in with them, lightly skimming his mind over the atmosphere of distrust, to hide his eagerness. The Masters of Sustenance had been scared; scared into terseness, unable to effectively communicate their instructions, but the Athosian woman had bridged the gap between Wraith and human. Teyla Emmagan, with the mind of a queen, coolly directed the disparate group, standing firm against truculence and pouring an encouraging balm over the minds of her colleagues. She led by example, following the Masters’ instructions herself, showing that, though dextrous with a knife, the preparation of human food did not come naturally to her. And no wonder; a leader, a mother and a warrior, she could not excel in all things.

Zephyr added the tiny yellow tubes to the bubbling water and recalled his initial frustrations. He had burnt himself on the hot plates, pulled packaging asunder, spilling its contents over himself, and cut so hard through a piece of meat that his knife stuck fast in the board beneath. But he had persevered, unlike the reluctant blades and, under Teyla’s sustaining tolerance, he had learnt to temper his movements and control the unfamiliar equipment and foodstuffs. Moreover, he had learnt of the pleasures of taste and texture. It was a constant wonder, this new diet. As a Wraithling he had eaten and digested food, but its blandness had been on a par with the nutritional paste that the Lanteans now supplied. He had not realised that eating could bring delight, almost like to the wave of vitality that came from human life-force, and without the taint of guilty self-disgust. He had worked hard to learn all he could and, on her final visit, Teyla had rewarded him with a smile and a small, battered book of instructions, written in Earth text. He had but to scan his translator over the yellowed pages and a world of culinary adventure opened up.

The book had been put to good use. Zephyr worked his way through the instructions, learning by trial and error which might be adapted to the ingredients available to him, and which were most acceptable to his palate. The dish he was currently preparing would have a savoury taste and a soft, but filling texture. It contained animal milk, a surprisingly versatile substance, and a derivation of animal milk known as cheese. “Cheese,” he said aloud, baring his teeth and stretching his lips around the strangely elongated syllable. And “Passssta!” he experimented, regarding the bubbling, steaming pan. His mouth watered in anticipation of the richly fatty, comfortingly filling meal. Other dishes that he had made were sweet, bringing a zinging rush of energy to his bloodstream, and still others combined a sweet taste with fatty richness. This was the attraction of the tubs of iced animal milk that drew Frostvine and her satellites to regularly disturb his little corner of the hive.

On the previous day, however, he had made a discovery; a dish that combined sweet with salt with fat, and those three things in such purity and intensity that their combined result was staggering. As the creamy softness had dissolved on his tongue, he had felt the in-rush of energy as if he were bathed in light and life and had flung back his head and closed his eyes in wild rapture. He had eaten it all and made another batch.

Zephyr peered into the swirling steam and considered the dancing yellow tubes. It would not do to cook them until they were completely soft; that way, they would not absorb the sauce correctly. He placed a perforated implement beneath the water pipe and, turning off the hob, lifted the heavy pan and poured the contents out, so that the water ran away. Then he returned the pasta to the pan and tipped in his sauce, stirring it around until the little tubes were coated in richly cloying fattiness.

Teyla had shown him how to make this dish, soothing his snarling wrath when he had burnt his sauce and had to start again, and laughingly telling him of her own disastrous attempts. “I learned from my mistakes,” she had said; and so had he, with her help. If there was no place for him here, when he reached full maturity, he would go to the Atlanteans and swear loyalty to Teyla. 

The idea was not new. He used it to assuage his insecurity whenever the press of the hive mind became too great, the sneers too marked, the disgust loud in his mind. The treaty had changed nothing in that respect; Zephyr had been marked as tainted from an early age and the fact that all now, willingly or unwillingly, cooperated with the humans and ate their food had not brought respite from his shameful position. It was too late; his place in the order was fixed. He had not felt the touch of his Queen’s mind since She had flayed his, in Her fury at his defiance, and he had but faint hope of ever winning Her approval. He would go to Teyla, he told himself, even though a part of his heart would always belong to Ironhand, his hive mother, and Her immense, unyielding strength that ran through the fabric of the hive and bound all together; all except Zephyr.

He transferred the pasta in its cheese sauce to a broad metal tray, ready to put in the oven. The first time he had made it he had been unable, at this point, to stop himself from plunging his hand into the slippery, wriggling mass, his self-control giving in to the lure of sensory pleasure. It had been warm and soft and had made a liquid, crackling, slosh as he stirred it with his hand. Teyla had at first glared at him with stern disapproval, but then her speaking eyes had rolled with rueful amusement and she had joined in. They had both devoured great steaming handfuls of the slithering tubes, the fatty sauce glistening on their lips and running down their chins, and she had compared him to her son when the child had first begun eating solid food. Zephyr had dropped his head, his hair falling forward to cover his face, but his embarrassment was feigned and he had stored his secret honour deep within a treasure-space in his mind.

Since then he had learned to delay his gratification, to bake the dish in the oven and then savour the slight, caramel-dark tinge of the toasted upper layer, and marvel at its contrast to the soft, creamy delight below. He opened the oven and lifted the heavy tray.

Zephyr’s pride in his achievement was his downfall; lost within his culinary world, the normally vigilant defences laid around the perimeter of his mind failed in their duty. 

Frostvine struck, in a sudden, savage assault. His muscles locked and then spasmed, the tray crashed to the ground and the metal rang, gong-like as it bounced across the floor, its slippery contents spilling out in a steaming, sloshing wave. Zephyr fell forward, his hands slapping into the fatty sauce, squashed slivers of pasta pushing their way up between his fingers. The assault ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and harsh laughter echoed both within and without, stabbing at his self-control, mocking and jeering at the cruel waste of his painstaking care.

Without thought, he launched himself forward and up, arms straining, fingers curled to rend and tear, fury burning in his heart and mind. He skidded and flailed in the ruin of his work and succeeded only in dealing Frostvine a swinging smack across her cheek, before his feet slipped out from beneath him and he landed heavily, ignominiously, on the floor, his face pressed into the rapidly congealing mess.

*Where you belong!* she sneered, deliberately placing a foot on his hair to smear it further into the greasy mire.

His hand shot out; he grabbed her ankle and jerked hard. She, too, skidded and landed with a shriek and a splat, droplets of sauce spraying out to shower her circle of awed followers. Then all subtlety, all maturity of intellect was abandoned on both sides and they fought, body and mind, like the youngest Wraithlings, clawing and snapping, grabbing and biting, screaming insults into the hive mind and the air in a wild release of years of festering resentment and suppression.

Zephyr grabbed a handful of silky hair and wrenched it down to wipe a ragged streak through the pulpy remains on the floor, and Frostvine jabbed her fingernails into his arm, thrust her clenched fist up under his chin and spun away, lashing out with one foot. It caught him in the midriff but he ignored the pain and snatched at her ankle again, hauling her over the floor as if she were a tool for cleaning. He felt a fierce surge of savage joy until she struck out with her mind, squashing him down inside himself and forcing him to release her, gasping and clutching at his head. She staggered to her feet, her dress covered with smears of grease and mashed-in pasta. 

One of the Wraithlings giggled.

Zephyr’s pain faded instantly as Frostvine’s attention was diverted, and her face became a mask of contorted rage. A twisting, writhing tornado formed in the blackness of her mind and rose, towering, blotting out all connection with the multitude of the hive. She raised her arms, flung back her head and prepared to strike out at both allies and enemy with all the force of her ancestry as a warrior queen. And froze. Her anger withered to fear and her hate melted into humiliation.

A thunderclap of ringing command crushed all thought into dust, its iron strength resonating through Zephyr, body and soul. He found that he was kneeling, and around him, all knelt, Wraithlings and young queen and retinue of blade and drone alike, leaving their Queen, Ironhand, standing, alone in Her absolute authority. His mind, for a moment, was crushed by Her anger and he had no coherent thought except to obey. The silence of his inner and outer worlds was complete.

Then, She spoke and Her voice stood for all that he longed for, all that he feared, the darkness and the richness, the majesty and the ultimate, dreadful power. With hopelessness, he knew that he loved Her. *Daughter, what has occurred in this place?*

Frostvine’s thoughts were a jumble of hate and accusation, veneered with petulant denial of wrongdoing. They were cut short by the sharp snap of the Queen’s will. She directed Her gaze at Zephyr, and Her long skirts rustled as she approached him. The tip of a pointed nail pressed below his jaw and forced him to raise his head. He could not tell Her thoughts, but felt Her will thrust into his and imprint it once more with Her mastery. She delved within his thoughts freely, sifting and weighing, judging his worth, deciding his fate. Her finely sculpted face was impassive, the sparkling depths of Her eyes like the magical wonder of golden bitter-sweet sugar crystals. He burned with the desire for Her approval and yet would not compromise. He was Zephyr, who slipped through the interstices of convention, whose respect for the humans and their way of life was genuine, who would learn their ways by learning the pleasures of their food. He would never be a warrior, not even for Her, and if the treaty failed and he was ordered to cull, he would refuse.

Suddenly his mind was free and he collapsed forward on his hands, gasping and exhausted.

She spoke. *Show me.*

One chance. That’s all he had. One chance to prove his worth. If he failed, She would kill him, or cast him out.

He rose to his feet, light-headed and staggering and lurched toward the cupboard that held his single hope: a plastic box, smooth and functional and not a fit gift for a Queen. He tugged at a corner of the lid, fumbled and nearly dropped it. The lid popped off and he knelt before Ironhand and presented Her with his gift, upheld on his two hands, his eyes humbly dropping to the embroidered hem of Her robe.

She sniffed the air and he felt the box move slightly in his hands as She touched the contents. Zephyr dared to raise his eyes as She lifted a piece to her lips and tasted.

Then he reeled and nearly fell as the flavours in Her mind burst forth in coruscating colours. There was a collective gasp from the whole assembly as they shared the Queen’s unstoppable surge of euphoria and, around him, wonder and curiosity sprung out from the minds of Her retinue and from the young ones. Ironhand’s eyes were closed, Her chest heaved and Her hand was flung out toward him, the feeding maw gaping and the fingers curled as if clamped tight to draw out the life of a victim. She shuddered and moaned aloud, Her lips drawn back in ecstasy; and then Her hand dropped and Her eyes flew wide and fixed intently onto his.

*What is this substance that you have wrought?*

He whispered humbly into Her mind. *My Queen, it is a human creation. They refer to it as ‘salted caramel fudge’.*

She hissed. *That is a crude designation. This thing, this ‘food’ has the force of light and life; it burns within me like a star! I name it ‘Life-rush.’ You will make more!*

Zephyr’s heart beat fast; he was dizzy with relief. But Ironhand’s great intellect was still veiled from him. Had he won Her approval? Or was he merely to be tolerated? The delicate caress of Her feeding hand raised his head once more. She was touching him, skin-to-skin, Her hand turned palm uppermost, so that his chin rested on the tip of Her finger. Her face would never be kind; She was not a warrior-mother of the land, like Teyla, but a Queen of the stars. There was a glimmer of starlight in Her eyes as She spoke.

*Zephyr, offspring of my body, for this gift you have made, I name you Master of the Queen’s -.* She broke off. *What is this place called?*

*It is a kitchen, my Queen,* His vision blurred with honour and love.

*Another crude term. Nevertheless, Zephyr, I name you Master of the Queen’s Kitchen. All shall heed your command in this small realm!* She raked the assembly with Her gaze, stamping each mind with Her authority, but spoke no word to Frostvine, who did not raise her eyes to her mother’s.

The Queen departed, and Zephyr remained on his knees, to be passed in turn by each of Her favoured blades. They projected reserve, for the most part, but as the Consort, his father, came alongside, he paused and sent a tiny flicking tendril across Zephyr’s mind; a mere blink of acknowledgement, but nevertheless tinged with a faint hint of respect. The Wraithlings followed, some laughing with relief, a couple of the little ones with tear-stained faces, and just one or two projecting congratulation at Zephyr, their minds winking with mischievous glee at their young leader’s discomfiture. Perhaps they were not such blind followers after all.

Frostvine was last. She looked down at her ruined dress and attempted to flap bits of crushed pasta loose from its folds. Then her eyes met his. She bared her teeth, then hid them, pushed her lank hair back over her shoulder and lifted her feet one at a time from the sticky floor. He detected uncertainty. Then she turned and, giving him a peremptory nod, stalked away. Zephyr’s lips curled up at one corner. He had not won that battle. But, if he chose not to engage, he knew an uneasy truce would endure; after all, he now controlled the supply of frozen food.

 _Master of the Queen’s Kitchen_ , he thought, with triumph. He had a place. His own place within the hive, marked out and delineated in the formality of the Queen’s declaration. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists and felt a tremble of pure joy deep within his body. As a Master, he could command the Queen’s drones. They would have to work for him, undertaking all of the routine jobs while he created and experimented. He could present the Queen with daily platters of tiny delights, allowing Her to explore and taste, consolidating his position within Her court, and expressing his love for Her through his offerings. He could win over the high status blades with his energy-packed creations so that they would never again be nostalgic for the gush of life from human prey. He could order the Queen’s tailors to make his clothes: a white suit, like the Atlantean Masters of Sustenance wore, except with more style. And he could source ingredients and perhaps deal with worlds so that they would grow food for him and he would take a Dart and descend in his shining white finery and his would be the final judgement, the yea or nay that accepted or declined their harvest, so that he would be courted and entertained and respected and-

Zephyr skidded in the glutinous remains of his pasta and fell to the floor once more, jarring his spine and snapping his teeth closed on his lower lip. He hissed in pain, his dreams of an illustrious future dissolving in the reality of his surroundings. The kitchen, his kitchen, was splattered with droplets of sauce, and, where he sat, the mess had been churned up by the boots of many Wraith and tracked across the room and out into the corridor. He hissed again, with irritation and then with amusement. Would his first act as Master be to send his thoughts scuttling after the Queen’s drones with a plea for a clean-up detail? No. He would clean up himself as he always did, and remain grounded in the present, in this momentous day, rather than letting himself fly into the possibilities of the future. For now it was enough that he had his place and that, when he reached out with his drifting, spiralling tendril of tentative enquiry, the hive drew him in and wove him amongst the warp and weft, as one of their own, a thread of perhaps a different colour, but a thread of value, nonetheless.

And besides the cleaning, he thought, wondering if there was enough cheese left, he had a meal to prepare.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for 'Fit for a Queen'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25974670) by [Salchat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salchat/pseuds/Salchat)




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